


Deception

by Verlaine



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verlaine/pseuds/Verlaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra ponders on his life and his fellow regulators.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deception

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to solosundance for beta, advice and encouragement.

One of the things Ezra Standish had learned at a young age was that deceiving others went a great deal easier if you did not at the same time deceive yourself. Maude might be able to drift around the unpleasant facts of life like a well-armored butterfly, but then she was a woman, and able to pass herself off as a lady. Even men who weren't precisely gentlemen knew Southern belles needed to be shielded from harsh reality. It had long ago ceased to surprise Ezra how many of them seemed willing to do exactly that in Maude's case. 

So Ezra had reluctantly accepted that while he was a good cheat, even a ruthless one, there were some lines he wouldn't cross, and there was no point in trying. He wouldn't go so far as to call it "having standards"; he just knew that some cons wouldn't work when he tried them, and left it at that.

He had also discovered that his sense of self-preservation wasn't what it could have been. Despite his best efforts, there were things he could not abide in silence. He'd learned—the hard way—that if you were foolish enough to express your honest opinion, you needed a simple but effective escape plan. Or very good aim.

And then he'd washed up here, in this benighted little town that at times seemed the furthest point away from civilization it was possible to reach, where entire concepts such as self-preservation and escape plans appeared to be foreign notions.

Standing in front of his closet, he hesitated for a moment before deciding on the bottle-green broadcloth coat. He slipped it on, smoothing down the lapels with an expression between a smile and a grimace. Appearances were everything, was the gospel according to Maude. If he wore this coat in a gambling salon in New Orleans or San Francisco, it would mark him instantly as second-rank, a man whose winnings weren't sufficient to aspire to the wardrobe appropriate for a gentleman. Yet here, nobody–except perhaps Mary Travis—would even realize that it was years behind the fashions. Certainly no one would care, any more than they cared that Mrs. Potter painstakingly turned the frayed cuffs and collars on his shirts, and had taken in his waistcoat when he'd dropped a few pounds.

Settling here had demanded entirely new levels of self-awareness. Ezra had been forced to face that the six men he rode with sometimes frightened the life out of him. It wasn't the gunplay—Ezra didn't seek out violence, but he had the necessary skills and wasn't chary about using them. Perhaps he wasn't in Chris Larabee's class as a shootist, but few were, and Ezra was certain he never wanted to endure what Larabee had, if that was proficiency's price.

It wasn't Larabee's temper, either: Ezra sometimes had the feeling what Larabee was really looking for was the person who could finally put him out of his misery. Since Ezra had no intention— _ever_ —of being in that position, he felt free to give Larabee's outbursts of despairing rage the attention they warranted.

No, it wasn't the dangers, and despite his freely voiced opinions, not the hardships either. None of that scared Ezra.

It was the feelings.

These men, hard, even brutal as they could be at times, cared with an imprudent intensity that to Ezra spoke of a shocking lack of understanding of the ways of the world. Trust was a dangerous commodity, to be doled out in strictly rationed amounts to a very select few. Concepts such as friendship and honor were fables, useful only for luring in marks.

Yet Vin Tanner had handed half his soul to Larabee before he'd known him two days, and seemed completely unperturbed by it. Nor did he seem at all bothered by the fact that Larabee was cautiously and grudgingly handing little bits of his own soul back. But then Vin made a habit of reading meaningful signs on the trail where others saw only scuffed earth and bare rock. Sometimes Ezra had the feeling there was a race going on, between Larabee's hunger for punishment, and Vin's calm steady acceptance. And wouldn't it come as a total surprise to both of them if Vin actually won? 

And then there were Buck and J.D. A man without siblings, Ezra had at first not understood the interaction between them, wondering at the strange antagonism that had sprung up so quickly to fuel their mocking and bickering. It had taken him some weeks to recognize the immediate bond of older and younger brother being forged in rough teasing and unwanted life lessons.

Once he did understand, Ezra was relieved. For all his tom-foolery, Buck Wilmington was a good man—the best of them all, Ezra often thought. He allowed neither grief nor anger to curdle into bitterness inside him, and his instinct to do what was right was as strong as Ezra's to consider the question from all sides. Ezra sometimes winced at the ideas Buck was giving J.D. about women, but of one thing he was certain: the burden young Miss Welles would carry in her marriage was more likely to be too much respect than too little. 

Josiah? Josiah's relationship with God was a tangle of barbed wire: love and anger, trust and rejection all so closely wound together they had become impossible to tease apart. The big preacher sometimes reminded Ezra of his readings in the book of Hosea. Infidelity, bitterness, broken trust, a weakness for the oblivion of the bottle, and yet, the next day, Josiah was still there, climbing up on the roof with his hammer and nails. Some relationships, apparently, were too strong to ever completely sever. Or perhaps were only tempered by fires that consumed others.

Nathan Jackson, who should have had faith in nothing and nobody, risked his life week by week to defend or to heal people who would take one look at the color of skin and spit at his feet. Or worse. Ezra had still been asleep when the whole lynching fiasco had played out, but he'd heard about it numerous times over the years from people who'd watched. The story had assumed all the trappings of myth: blonde and lovely Mrs. Travis confronting the mob armed only with only her righteous zeal, Vin and Chris stalking down the street to the graveyard like dark angels, partners in justice before they ever spoke a word to each other, Nathan rising up from the brink of the grave to save the men who had saved him.

All romantic nonsense, of course. While Ezra was certain he wouldn't have taken part in the lynch mob himself, he was also fairly sure he wouldn't have interfered. Stepping between cretins and their prejudices always gave bad odds. Yet if it were to happen again today, he had no doubt he'd be on his way down the street right beside Chris and Vin, and not just because Nathan was the closest thing to a doctor within fifty miles. Nathan might be a stiff-necked prude, but he upheld the Hippocratic oath better than men Ezra had seen with degrees from the finest colleges in the east.

Settling his waistcoat and gunbelts comfortably, Ezra ran a finger along his watch chain and fob. He'd pawned it after a run of bad luck last month, and only got it back last week. When Maude had given it to him, she'd told him it had been his father's. The memory of his horrified shame the first time he'd been forced to pledge it still stung like raw whiskey in a wound. Even though it turned out Maude had lied; she'd bought the trinket at a pawnshop herself.

No matter. The years had made it his, held as fiercely as if it truly had been a treasured heirloom. Three times he'd been forced to put it up as security since he'd arrived here, and twice he'd been able to get it back. This last time he truly had lost hope, his luck at cards fluctuating wildly enough it was all he could do to keep himself in bullets and maintain his horse, let alone worry about an ornament, no matter how prized. Then Vin had simply tossed it across the table one morning at breakfast, with one of his shy grins and a remark that since the chain wouldn't stretch across Guy Royal's gut, Ezra might as well have it back.

And wasn't it the greatest irony that, precisely because Vin would never ask to be paid back, Ezra would put off his own comforts to make sure his debt was settled in full.

Ezra sighed. It seemed that he'd become tied to this group of flawed and fragile heroes, destined, for better or worse, to play out his hand in their game, no matter what the outcome.

It would all end in disaster, of course. Chris might clear Vin's name, Vin might save Chris from himself; more than likely both of them would die trying. Nathan would come up against an injury or illness that not even his skill and determination could vanquish, and this time there would be no one there to cheat the lynch mob's noose. J. D.—

Some day young J. D. would meet one of those shootists whose adventures filled his dimestore novels.

And then Buck would turn into another Chris Larabee.

What frightened Ezra most was that he understood all this, and despite everything he knew of the world could not think of any of it as weakness. No matter how much he'd argued with himself, he had been unable to avoid becoming part of something, something more than just seven men with guns protecting a town. Something made up of Mrs. Potter darning his shirts and J.D. burning Ezra Simpson's wanted posters right along with Vin Tanner's and Miss Nettie bullying him into helping repair the barn roof and Josiah not even blinking once when Ezra slunk into the back of the church during a service.

He twitched back the curtain and looked down to the street. From the south, a cloud of dust approached, almost large enough to hide the group of riders beneath it. 

Chris and Buck were lounging on a bench outside the saloon. It was only from this vantage point one could see the rifles lying at their feet, and that Chris was already holding his pistol under cover of the serape draped around him. Nathan sat on the top step of the stairs leading to the clinic, shotgun at his side. Josiah leaned against the door of the livery below him. J. D., his young face set and still, sheriff's badge for once openly displayed on his coat, waited on the porch in front of the jail. Only Vin was out of sight, and Ezra knew he was probably on the roof above, rifle in hand. 

"A pity you're no longer the third kind, Ezra," he murmured. "Life would be so much easier."

He touched his shoulder holster, his sleeve where the derringer sat waiting. He took one last look at the mirror to adjust his hat brim and cravat.

And went down to the street to take his place with his friends.


End file.
